teaching, technology and other such stuff

Mathelicious

It seems like it is a pretty good time to be a math teacher. Every week, I see several new resources for math problems, math projects, and real world math applications on Twitter and various websites. These resources along with the potential for programming online and game access at the click of a mouse could produce a much-improved, more relevant math class. Ahhh – if it were only that easy! I’ll save that for another post.

I thought I’d share a few resources that I’ve seen in the last few weeks:

Bedtime Math – http://bedtimemathproblem.org/ – I read to my two boys before bed. We cuddle up and read a few pages from a book before bedding down for the night. But, being a math geek myself, I have also added something additional – just before I leave their room, my son prompts, “Math problem please…” Music to my ears – I give him a quick multiplication (or now, we are moving on to division) problem for him to figure out before I leave. The site, Bedtime Math, picks up on the idea that we don’t just have bedtime stories but we can throw some math in there too. The site provides a math word problem everyday broken into different age levels, like this:

Little kids: If 32 cars and trucks drive by in an hour, and 12 are trucks, how many are cars? Bonus: If half the cars have a dog riding along, and half of those dogs are sticking their heads out the window, how many dogs are hanging out the window?

Big kids: If 47 cars, 15 motorcycles, 4 buses and 2 ice-cream trucks drive by, how many vehicles is that? Bonus: How many wheels is that in total? (Assume the trucks and buses are 4-wheeled like the cars.)

NCTM Twitter Feed – http://twitter.com/#!/nctm – While we are on the subject of daily mathematics problems, check out the Twitter feed from NCTM (the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). The provide a challenging problem everyday (except for Mondays, I think). What a great way to start off class or challenge those students who seem to always finish before the rest of the class. Here’s a sample:

Finally, you can now touch algebra. Algebra Touch is an app for the iPad/iPhone and it allows you to interact with algebra equations. The app takes advantage of the “touch” of the iPad and you can swipe, tap, slide, and move terms and equations around the screen. I know there are some students who will be relieved to use this app.